


Frost from Fire

by diadelphous



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-23 01:59:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8309407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diadelphous/pseuds/diadelphous
Summary: Jyn Erso is a witch, and she's almost done with her training. But one cold morning when she's out on the moors, she runs across a strange man in a white cape.Written for the Jynnic Fandom Challenge, prompt 45





	

This time of year the mornings are still dark when Jyn wakes up, blinking against the yellow light of her bedroom lamp. It switches on automatically every morning, a reminder from Ms. Tano of the chores Jyn has to complete before she can begin the day’s training.

Jyn stumbles out of bed and dresses, moving by rote. The house is quiet, the three other girls all sleeping peacefully for another hour. Jyn is the oldest, the closest to completing her training, and so Ms. Tano works her harder. “I’m preparing you,” she always says. “The life of a witch is a hard one. Best you learn that now.”

In these cold early mornings, though, Jyn wonders if that hard life is worth it.

This morning seems colder than usual, a hollow wind bellowing outside Jyn’s bedroom window. She sighs and pulls a long coat out of her closet and fastens it tight up to her neck. Grabs a scarf, too. She’ll need the extra warmth. Then she gathers her basket and the little electric flashlight she uses to light her way into the moors, to help her find patches of mellweed.

Mellweed. It’s a flower that grows wild over this part of the world, a flower that only blooms in the shuddery darkness before dawn. A flower that can channel the Magic better than any of the herbs growing wild in the garden beside the house. Ms. Tano uses mellweed in the secret rituals she conducts beneath the silvery light of the moon, rituals even Jyn hasn’t been allowed to see yet. She will soon, though. If she wakes up every morning, if she gathers the mellweed and memorizes the incantations and practices channeling the Magic for hours at a time, then Ms. Tano will take her out into the moors and reveal the secrets of their order.

Not yet, though. Jyn still has another season to go.

She stops in the kitchen to fill a ceramic thermos with steaming coffee, listening to the wind howling while the coffee brews. It’s an eerie morning—night, really, it’s still night. The moon has waned into a tiny sliver, like a parenthesis hanging in the sky, and for the last several days Jyn’s early morning trips have gotten darker and darker. And that _wind_. It blasts along the side of the house, hard enough that the glass rattles in the windows.

The coffee finishes; Jyn tucks the thermos in her basket and takes a deep breath. “Those secret rituals better be worth it,” she mutters before pushing the door open.

The wind blasts her, cold and biting and almost cruel. She curses and pulls the scarf up over her head. A long rectangle of light spills out of the doorway, illuminating the feverfew growing along the path. Jyn fumbles with her light, her fingers already stiff from the cold. The wind gusts and the door slams shut, plunging her suddenly into darkness. Jyn curses again, more earnestly this time, and then the light switches on, a pale, paltry circle illuminating the path. She pushes forward, the wind battering at her, whipping her coat around her legs. Her light bounces over the ground and illuminates pale strands of windworn grass, of smooth stones. Nothing looks familiar in this darkness, even though Jyn has spent the last ten years of her life tending to this garden, learning all of its secrets. “You learn the Magic through the earth,” Ms. Tano was always saying. “If you can know the earth, then you can know the Magic.”

Jyn wonders what it means for the Magic, that the unfamiliar earth has turned so alien in this uncanny, wind-blasted night.

Still, she plunges forward. Her scarf flutters out behind her, and she takes a few hesitant sips of the coffee, hoping it will help warm her up. It does, a little. But she still has a while until she get to the nearest patch of mellweed. So she ducks her head down and trudges against the wind. The night has a sharp edge to it, like the air itself is laced through with metal.

For the first time, Jyn wonders if it’s dangerous, her being out here.

She stops, wind howling around her. It’s true that the morning doesn’t feel quite _right_ , although Jyn wouldn’t say that it feels unnatural, either. It’s a peculiar sensation, one that tugs at her chest, leaving her feeling unmoored, with nothing but her flashlight and her coffee to help ground her. She takes a deep breath and sets the basket on the ground. Then she stands very still, reaching out for the Magic. She has done this thousands of times before; the Magic is everywhere, flowing through all living things. She concentrates, and a few seconds later she feels the magic coursing beneath the ground, humming on the wind. But her suspicions were right—it isn’t quite _the_ Magic. It feels—bent, somehow. As if the Magic were being shaped in ways Jyn has never seen before.

Her eyes fly open. The darkness swirls around her. Her flashlight has switched off—how did that happen? She must have dropped it when she went into her trance, although she hadn’t thought she’d gone in that deeply. Jyn kneels and runs her hand over the ground, trying to find her basket. But she only pulls up clumps of cold grass and half-frozen earth.

“Is this what you’re looking for?”

The voice cuts straight through her. It’s like the broken mirror shard that Ms. Tano has used in some of her darker spells. Reflective and full of light and sharp enough to kill.

Jyn whirls around, chest so tight she can barely breathe. All she can see is that pitch black darkness. But then her eyes catch on something—

A flash of white.

“Who are you?” she shouts. “You’re trespassing on private property.”

Laughter, rising and falling with the wind. Jyn turns in place, wild with fear but refusing to show it. “Get off my property!” she says.

A light switches on. Her flashlight. She recognizes that worthless circle of light immediately. It bobs toward her, and she sees fragments of the figure who holds it. White. He’s dressed in white.

Jyn braces her feet against the ground, calls the Magic to her. Ms. Tano has taught her how to fight with it, although she’s only ever practiced with the other girls, tossing harmless balls of light at one another.Still, she feels the Magic drawing up through her as if through an oil well, and the tips of her fingers tingle with energy.

“Stop right there!” she shouts, and when he doesn’t, she flings the Magic at him, a concentrated ball of light that hums as it wings through the air.

Everything that happens next, happens in a blur. The flashlight drops, the flash light switches off, the figure raises one arm, Jyn’s magic explodes.

It explodes, but doesn’t do any harm, just hangs there, glimmering, illuminating everything. For the first time Jyn sees the trespasser. It’s a man, tall and lean and dressed in white. He keeps one arm raised to block the Magic, and it radiates around him like a halo. He wears a cape that flutters out behind him.

“I’m afraid it won’t be that easy,” he says.

Jyn stumbles backward. The man watches her. His eyes are too blue in the light of the Magic. As blue as an October sky.

“Who are you?” she whispers.

He smiles. “Who are you?”

The Magic is starting to fade out. It falls across the grass, innocuous and lovely, like starlight, and leaves just enough light to see by. The man lowers his arm. His cape ripples with the movement.

“I asked first,” she says.

The man seems to consider this, his head tilted. “You can call me Krennic,” he finally says.

Krennic. Jyn doubts very much that it’s his real name. He seems like the sort of creaturewho would hold his true name to his chest, for fear of being controlled. She’s talked about that sort of Magic with Ms. Tano. It’s powerful, and it’s dark. “Not anything I’m going to teach you,” Ms. Tano said. “We don’t use our strength to control people.”

“And you?” Krennic says. He takes one step forward, a pale shadow in the fading light of Jyn’s Magic. “I told you my name. I think it’s only fair that you should tell me yours.”

Jyn lifts her chin. She wonders if this man is the reason Ms. Tano taught her and the other girls how to fight.

“Well?” He steps closer to her, close enough that he reaches out with one gloved hand and brushes the back of his fingers across her left cheek. She can’t sense any Magic on him, but an energy radiates from his touch. Not the sort of energy she’s used to, either. Something darker, something close to death. She jerks away, her face burning. She doesn’t know if it’s anger or desire.

“Don’t touch me,” she snaps, trying to cover up her fear. Ms. Tano has warned her about that kind of Magic. Death-kissed and dangerous. The last of the light from her Magic is fading, and he’ll probably attack in the sudden onslaught of darkness. But she can’t bring herself to run.

“I just want your name,” he says. “That’s all.”

“Who are you?” Shadows crawl across the grass.

“I told you. You can call me Krennic.”

“No,” she says, drawing on the Magic again, trying desperately to remember all of Ms. Tano’s lessons. “ _What_ are you?”

The light goes out.

“That,” Krennic says, “I think you already know.”

Jyn turns and runs back to the safety of the house.

* * *

“You didn’t get the mellweed,” Ms. Tano says during breakfast.

Jyn looks up from her stack of blackberry pancakes. She has cut them into smaller and smaller pieces. Her appetite is gone. She keeps thinking about the man on the moors. Krennic.

“I—” She stops, glances over at the younger students. They’re pretending to be absorbed in their breakfast. “I’ll tell you later.”

Ms. Tano frowns.Jyn tilts her head toward the girls.

“Aw, c’mon,” says Emily. “You can say in front of us.”

Jyn shrugs. “Don’t feel like it.”

Emily sticks out her tongue and Jyn gathers up her plate and carries it into the kitchen. Sunlight streams in through the windows, bright and lemony and warm, and her encounter this morning feels like it happened in a dream. There’s no dark Magic here, not in this cottage, not in the garden, not even out on the moors. It’s only the natural Magic Ms. Tano teaches them, comforting and familiar.

Jyn feels a hand on her shoulder. It’s Ms. Tano, her brow creased in concern.

“What happened?” she says in a low voice.

Jyn sighs. Why does telling Ms. Tano about the man feel like a betrayal? She doesn’t even feel like she’s betraying him, really, just herself. She hasn’t been able to keep a secret for the last ten years. It’s impossible in this house.

“I saw a man,” she says flatly, and drops her plate in the sink. “A man in white. Out on the moors.”

Ms. Tano crosses her arms over her chest. “And?”

“And that’s all there was. He didn’t attack me or anything.” Jyn presses up against the counter. She wants out of this conversation. She wants to go out into the garden and yank out weeds, get dirt under her fingernails.

And think about Krennic.

“But you felt something,” Ms. Tano said. “Dark Magic.”

Curses. Of course Ms. Tano would know. Ms. Tano knows everything. Jyn lifts her gaze toward the ceiling. “I don’t know,” she says. “I think so. Maybe. It’s not like he did anything to me.”

“I felt their presence when I woke up this morning,” Ms. Tano says. “Nothing strong—I thought maybe I was being paranoid. It seems I wasn’t.” Ms. Tano walks over to the window. The sunlight catches on her jewelry, blue and white and orange, and it throws off a cascade of glittering color. “We’re going to need to protect the house. That’s the first thing. Then you and me, we’ll need to find out what they want. Why they’re here.”

Jyn nods. She follows Ms. Tano’s gaze out through the window. She can almost catch a glimpse of the moors, purple in the sunlight. Krennic felt dangerous. She can’t deny that. But she isn’t afraid of him, either.

She doesn’t say this to Ms. Tano. Maybe she’ll be able to keep a secret after all.

* * *

That night the house crackles with protective Magic, buzzing and weaving its way through the rooms and corridors. Jyn and Ms. Tano spent all day setting up the wards, working together in the copse of willow trees that grow close to the house. Jyn’s exhausted from the effort, but she can’t sleep. Her thoughts keep going back to Krennic and his white cloak in the darkness.

It had been hard too concentrate as she worked the Magic with Ms. Tano. She couldn’t let her thoughts wander to Krennic at all, because her memories of him could taint the spells, leave them brittle and weak. And worse, Ms. Tano would know something was wrong. She would demand answers. And Jyn is not willing to tell her that it feels as if Krennic has infected her mind.

When she closes her eyes, she sees him, lit by the light of her Magic, studying her as if she were a specimen pinned to a board. Desire quakes inside of her, but so does anger. Anger at him, for tying up her mind like this. She keeps recreating the lines of his face, the blue of his eyes. She tries to remember the exact timbre of his voice—low, sharp-edged. She’s never been one for stupid crushes. It’s always been the other way around, boys from the village begging for a phone number whenever she goes into town.

“What is happening to me?” she mutters, then flops over on her bed, sheets tangling up in her legs. In her memory Krennic brushes her cheek, the leather of his gloves soft against her skin.

Magic. Her eyes fly open. Maybe this isn’t her at all. Maybe it’s some dark Magic of his. Ms. Tano has never been very clear about what it is the Dark Witches want. “It’s not the witches themselves,” she said once, “it’s their choice of magic. It’s unstable. It warps their minds.” She looked away, her expression distant, her eyes sad. “It changes who they used to be.”

Of course. Jyn should have seen it earlier. This is some trick, some way of getting into the house. Jyn knows she should have said something to Ms. Tano earlier, but she had been so stubborn, so keen on keeping her secrets. She doesn’t want to tell her now, either. It’s not worth waking her up and facing her anger at Jyn’s mistake. Jyn’ll just have to fix this herself.

The clock on the wall tells her it’s almost three am. The witch’s hour. Not that Jyn has ever done her Magic in the middle of the night. Her Magic, Ms. Tano’s Magic, is the Magic of the sun and the earth and growing things.

But not for Krennic, she thinks. Not for the dark witches.

Jyn jumps out of bed and throws on a coat over her nightgown and pulls on a pair of the boots she wears when she gathers mellweed. She grabs her flashlight and slips it in the pocket of the coat. The Magic thrums. But she since she set up the wards, she knows how to undo them.

She pushes open her window. Freezing night air blows in. It has that sense of strangeness on it again. Jyn’s heart thuds. She closes her eyes and draws up the Magic and murmurs the incantation to undo the wards. They fray, unravel, splitting open so she can pass through undetected into the night.

She stops in the garden to gather anise and belladonna and juniper, braiding the stalks together with cold clumsy fingers. “Good enough,” she mutters, before pricking her finger on a thorn from a dormant rose bush. A drop of witch’s blood, a few choice words, and the charm is complete. She’s not going out there without some kind of protection. She already knows she can’t fight him.

She tucks the braid of herbs into the inner pocket of her coat and sets out toward the moors. The soft buzz of the protective Magic encasing the house falls away and Jyn has the sense of being naked out there under the stars. Vulnerable. Small. She slips her hands in her pockets and trudges forward, head tilted down, cold wind buffeting against her. She tries not to think about how she’s going to find him again; she could do a tracking spell, expect she has nothing of his to prepare it with it. No strand of hair, no scrap of fabric from that pristine white cape. Only her memories, and she doesn’t trust those.

She decides she’ll give herself until morning. If the sun comes up, pink and gray on the horizon, she’ll return home and decide what to do next. Until then, though—she’ll wander the moors. She wants rid of this infection plaguing her mind, and she’ll stay out all night to do it.

She crests a hill and even in the darkness she can make out the gentle rolling tumble of the moors. The night feels brighter tonight. The stars shine more clearly. She sweeps her flashlight across the darkness, a blur of light that captures strands of pale grass, a few jagged rocks.

And then:

“You never told me your name.”

Jyn whirls around, the flashlight’s beam whirling with her. He’s off to her left, standing on the big mossy rock where the younger girls like to go on the weekends to flip through the fashion magazines they buy in the village. Jyn focuses the light on his face. He doesn’t squint, doesn’t shy away from it. He’s wearing the cape again, and it streams off behind him and for half a second Jyn imagines that cape wrapped around her naked body.

Did Krennic just smile? Heat rushes up through Jyn’s cheeks. “You did something to me!” she shouts. “Infected me with some kind of possession spell.”

Krennic jumps off the rock and strolls toward her. Jyn stands her ground, fingers squeezed tight around the flashlight so it doesn’t tremble. Krennic stops, only a pace or two away.

“I did no such thing.”

Jyn glares at him. “I’m almost fully trained. You did _something_.”

Krennic laughs. “I didn’t activate anything that wasn’t already there. Only—teased it out a little.” He reaches for her again, and this time she ducks. He lets his hand fall to his side. “I’m sorry,” he says, after a pause. “I suppose it was imprudent of me.”

“Why?” Jyn asks. “Why would you do that?” She feels hot with embarrassment. Of course, she would have felt a larger spell. All this desire was already hers. But she didn’t have to let him know that.

Krennic shrugs. “I thought it would be the easiest way to see you again.”

Jyn glowers at him. “Why? What do you want?”

“I’ve been telling you.” He steps back, out of the beam of the flashlight. A pale shadow in the darkness, like a photographic negative. “I want to know your name.”

“Why?” Jyn asks. “So you can enchant me for real? Seduce me into helping the dark witches. That’s who you are, isn’t it? One of the dark witches?”

“No,” Krennic says. “But sometimes they summon me. Sometimes they need my help.”

Jyn’s mouth goes dry. The flashlight slips out of her hands and lands with a thump at her feet. It shines on Krennic’s shiny black boots. He’s not a witch.

He’s not even _human_.

“What are you?” she whispers. “What—why are you here?”

“I’m _here_ ,” Krennic says, “because I knew you would seek me out again. I want to know your name.”

“Why?” Jyn screams, panic turning the word as sharp as a knife. It slices at her throat. “Why? What do you want from me?”

Krennic bends down, his movements hazy in the darkness, and picks up the flashlight. He turns it so the beam faces the ground and then he holds it up between and then he lets go. It hovers there, mid-air, like a lamp.

“So we can see each other,” he says calmly.

Jyn knows she should run back to the house, back to the safety of the wards. She knows she should slam into Ms. Tano’s room and tell her everything. But she doesn’t. She stands just outside the rim of the flashlight, studying the way the light illuminates the sharp angles of Krennic’s face. Her heart hammers.

“Tell me your name,” he says, “and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

The blood pounds in Jyn’s ears. She slips her hand into her coat pocket and curls her hand around the charm. The Magic shimmers. Safe. Protective. Krennic smiles like he knows what she’s doing but he doesn’t try to stop her.

She knows what she should do, but she doesn’t want to do it. She has always taken risks. Ms. Tano has warned her about it, although always with a knowing smile. “The best witches take risks,” Ms. Tano said when Jyn first came to study at the house. “Otherwise, you’d never get anything done.”

“Jyn,” she whispers, and then she holds her breath, squeezing the charm so tightly the herbs crush and release their scent.

“Jyn.” Krennic nods. “Thank you.” He steps into the pool of light, and Jyn feels drawn to him—because he knows her name? But no, it doesn’t feel like Magic. She stays put.

“Well, Jyn,” Krennic says, “I’m here because a coven of what you call dark witches summoned me to help with their doings. A spell of protection, like the charm you have in your pocket there,” he nods toward her and Jyn yanks out her hand, “but much more powerful, of course. They aren’t concerned with you or your mistress Ahsoka Tano.”

“How do you know her name?” Jyn whispers, stiff with fear.

Krennic smiles. “She has a history you couldn’t begin to understand. Would you like to see some dark Magic?”

“What?” Jyn’s thoughts are stuck with Ms. Tano. Krennic is toying with her. He probably knew her name all along.

“Dark Magic,” Krennic says. “I suspect you don’t know much about it. I thought you might like to see some.”

“You’re trying to distract me,” Jyn says, curling her hands into fists, trying to press down her anger. “I’m not stupid. What do you know about Ms. Tano?”

Krennic sighs, shakes his head. Smiles again, that sly little curve of a smile that makes something inside her chest coil around with delight. “I never should have told you know I know her history. It’s not important. I’m sure she’ll tell you in time.” Krennic holds out one hand, palm up. The Magic begins to stir. Jyn shoves her hand in her pocket and grips her protection charm as tightly as she can. When Krennic sees her, he just smiles more widely.

“You don’t think I’m going to hurt you, do you?”

She feels the Magic spoil, feels it rot and decay. Mushrooms the color of moonlight spring out of the frozen soil, unfurling their caps. The air buzzes. There is a scent like flowers left too long in a vase. It’s not exactly unpleasant.

Krennic raises his hand. The air above his palm shimmers, rippling like water. He’s no longer smiling, no longer toying with her. His brow is creased in concentration; his gaze is fixed on the space above his hand. The air itself is tearing apart. The molecules are coming undone at the seams. And in the gap between them, Jyn sees a glimpse of an alien landscape. Trees with diamonds for leaves. A river of molten light. A purple sky.

Faerie.

Jyn has learned about Faerie. She’s studied it, pouring over the old texts in the evenings. It’s supposed to be unattainable in this modern era. Too much iron built into the world these days. Jyn steps closer to Krennic, closer to the gash in the universe widening above his hand.

“That’s what dark Magic can do,” Krennic says. His voice is raspy, almost breathless.

“This is supposed to be impossible,” Jyn breathes, staring in awe at the world on the other side of her own. A shadow moves across that violet sky. Something like a bird that is not a bird.

“Not when you’re me,” Krennic says. “Not when you’re willing to call on death.”

He squeezes his hand into a fist. The glimpse of Faerie vanishes. The scent of rotting flowers washes away. The mushrooms crumble into silvery dust. Jyn looks up at him, meets his eyes. There is a power radiating off of him, a power she’s never felt before. A power that thumps deep inside the marrow of her bones.

“Do you want to learn?” Krennic asks.

Jyn’s mouth has gone dry. She licks at her lips, fumbles with the edge of her coat. A cold wind comes pouring over the moors. The power, the Magic, thumps in time with her heart beat.

“Yes,” she whispers, before she realizes what she’s doing.

Krennic smiles. “I’ll teach you for cheaply,” he says, “since I’m already here, in your world. One kiss. That’s all it will take to learn.”

Jyn blinks—what the hell is she doing? She can’t learn dark Magic from a Fae man in a white cloak. She has to get back to the house, back to Ms. Tano and the younger girls. She has to complete her training. She has to.

I don’t have to do anything, she thinks.

It’s a wild thought. A true thought. She’s always chafed a little under Ms. Tano’s tutelage, hasn’t she? Always pushed to learn too much, too fast. Always wanted to uncover the next secret.

She steps closer to Krennic. He watches her, his gaze heavy. Her whole body prickles with desire. “Are you doing this to me?” she asks.

“Absolutely not.” Krennic smiles. “At least not with magic.”

Her cheeks flush hot, but she won’t let herself be embarrassed.

“One kiss,” she says. “And you’ll teach me everything.”

He nods.

“I know there’s a catch,” she says. “I’ve read the books.”

Krennic laughs. “Smart girl.” He extends one arm, as quick as a bolt of lightning. Presses his hand onto her heart. She freezes while her heart races. Krennic moves closer to her, bending his arm like a hinge, not taking it from her chest. His fingers press against her breasts. Desire flares up inside her. She doesn’t move away.

“The catch,” he whispers, leaning down so that his lips brush against her cheek. His hand sears warmth into her chest. “The chest is that you’ll prefer this life. You’ll stay with me. And together we’ll do unimaginable things.”

She can barely breathe. She has to resist the urge to reach down and touch herself, she’s so overcome with desire.

“Now,” he says, his breath hot on her skin, “What do you choose?”

Jyn doesn’t need to think about it. Not anymore. She turns her head and presses her lips hard against his. Krennic wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her body to him, and she kisses him as if she’s dying, as if his kiss will give her life.


End file.
